Last night, Masahiro Tanaka gave up 4 runs for the first time this season and what happens? The Yanks win, anyway.

Carlos Beltran’s 3-run home run started it as the Bombers tagged their old pal Phil Hughes for 7 runs, enough to give them a 7-4 win.

The best part of the night was that Zelous Wheeler, called up in place of the struggling Port Jervis Solarte (Zelous for Yanjervis, that alone makes it memorable), got 2 hits in his first MLB game. The first hit–a homer. Wheeler is a squat guy–since the Yanks were in Minnie, a Kirby Puckett analogy came up–had reason to smile, and his teammates did too. Sometimes, a team will mess with a rookie when they get their first hit or home run, ignoring them for a moment when the kid returns to the dugout. The Yankees didn’t do that. They greeted Zelous’ grin with big smiles of their own as if to say, “We needed that.”

And they did.

[Photo Credit: Jim Mone]